When Liam Williams was encouraged to apply for Cambridge University, he thought nothing of it. The process barely punctured his daily routine. “I filled in my application watching Deal or No Deal with a spliff,” he recalls. “We got stoned and watched it every afternoon – it was bliss. The Cambridge form was kind of secondary.”
Despite the dedicated focus to weed and Noel Edmonds, he was accepted. The ensuing transition of manically studying to get top grades, along with preparing to leave behind his friends and old life, is at the core of the third and final series of Ladhood – the semi-autobiographical sitcom set in Williams’s home town of Garforth near Leeds.
It’s a split narrative show, following an adult version of Williams navigating a bleak existence of broken relationships, excessive drinking, self-destructive behaviour and a proclivity for kicking bins. “I don’t need therapy, I’m just from the north,” he proclaimed in the first series. The counter narrative based around the “existentially disillusioned” teenage version of Williams (Oscar Kennedy) and his friends Craggy (Shaun Thomas), Addy (Aqib Khan) and Ralph (Samuel Bottomley) navigating teenage years of booze, school, parties, girls, fights, smoking and showing off.
